


been talking ‘bout the way things change

by celaenos



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: 5 Times, F/F, F/M, Fic Exchange, Marrying Late in Life, Old Married Couple, One Shot, Second marriage, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25171279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celaenos/pseuds/celaenos
Summary: When she finally got her courage up enough to say anything to Keyleth about her revelation, it was comical. In her panic, Vex had forgotten that flirting with Keyleth was one of the most entertaining and alluring things in the world, and doing it consciously was even more fun. Keyleth had sputtered and gone a delightful shade of bright red, then promptly fallen right out of her chair, and Vex knew this was all going to work out just fine.(or, five times that Vex and Keyleth spent together in the gardens of Whitestone).
Relationships: Keyleth/Vex'ahlia (Critical Role), background Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Mussel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia
Comments: 36
Kudos: 226
Collections: Just Married Exchange 2020





	been talking ‘bout the way things change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesunsaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesunsaid/gifts).



> hello!! i hope you enjoy this little fic. it's not quite what i had imagined it would be when i sat down to start playing around with your prompts, but i had fun writing it! i tried to add as much background perc'ahlia for you as i could<3

**_i._ **

Vex looks up and catches sight of Keyleth. The sun is shining all around her, almost like a golden aura. Vex watches her squint adorably, hands coming up to cover her eyes as she pauses and waits for Percy to catch up.

In her arms, Vesper demands Vex’ahlia’s attention, and she turns to coo down at the little bundle. By the time that she looks back up, Keyleth and Percy have both joined her in the gardens. Percy beams down at Vesper, passing a little trinket that he’s been fiddling with since this morning into her tiny waiting hands. As he sits down beside Vex’ahlia, his arm wraps around her and he kisses her temple. Vex leans into his embrace, as relaxed and as happy as she’s been since Vesper’s birth.

Keyleth flops down into the grass, face up towards the sun like a cat. She’s there only seconds before Trinket lumbers over and pushes himself against her. Keyleth happily obliges and reaches over to pet him before turning back to meet Vex’s eye—still squinting. “It’s a nice day, huh?”

Vex’ahlia feels the sun shining down on all of them, can hear the sounds of Pike, Scanlan, and Grog bickering good-naturedly from down the path, can feel her daughter’s heartbeat against her own—she smiles. There is only one thing that would make this day perfect—but she’s made as much of her peace with Vax’s death as she can manage right now.

Vex smiles. “It’s wonderful, darling.”

…

…

**_ii._ **

Keyleth hasn’t been back for ages, it turns out, that being the leader of your people brings about quite a lot of responsibilities. Spring seems to be one of the busiest times of the year for the Air Ashari, and Vex is loathsome to admit just how much she misses her.

It’s an unusually hot day for April and the children are feeling the effects of the heat. Everyone is grumpy and short-tempered and Percy is stuck in a council meeting with Cassandra. Johanna picks up a doll and whacks Claudia over the head with it, and that is the last straw; Vex orders everyone outside, carrying toddler Ronan in her arms as Vesper, Freddie, and the twins sprint ahead towards the garden ponds.

Vex helps Ronan toddle around in one of the shallow ponds as the twins stand on either side and splash each other, giggling madly. Freddie does his best to keep up with Vesper and nearly sends Vex’s heart into her throat when he slips under, but Trinket yanks him back up half a beat later. Her five-year-old comes up sputtering, looking so much like a wet, upset, mini version of Percy, that Vex cannot hold back her laughter.

Laughter begins to echo with her own, and Vex turns to find Keyleth, hunched over and cackling at the sight of her nephew, hanging from the back of his shirt in Trinket’s mouth.

“Auntie Kiki!” Vesper screams and takes off at a running leap. The twins start to scramble out of the pond to follow, and Keyleth only has seconds to brace herself before eight-year-old Vesper launches into her arms. Johanna and Claudia climb up Keyleth and make demands about her becoming an octopus and a whale with equal measure. Vesper rolls her eyes, trying to appear cooler and far more mature than her four-year-old sisters, but Vex can see that demands of Water Elemental Keyleth are on the tip of her tongue.

Trinket deposits the water-logged Freddie down beside Vex and she smiles gratefully up at him. “Darling, stay in the shallow pond for now,” Vex says. Freddie nods, slipping down and splashing his baby brother, who screams with delight from Vex’s arms. Vex groans and wipes some of the water off her face. Her attempt is made moot when not seconds later, the girls all cheer as Keyleth turns into a Water Elemental and dives into the water, drenching everyone.

Keyleth swims with the girls, shooting the twins up into the air and backflipping into the water with Vesper in her arms for over an hour. Freddie grows brave and leaps onto her back when she slips into her dolphin form, and he screams out with delight as she spins him, leaping between ponds until she jumps up, turns back into herself, and lands with him laughing on the bank. Ronan claps enthusiastically and then three minutes later, promptly falls asleep in Vex’s arms.

The twins have almost grown out of naps entirely, but a morning of playing hard in the hot sun does the trick and a few minutes later, Vex has blankets laid out underneath a tree and three of her children lying sound asleep beside her. Keyleth flops down, worn out and beaming once she finally gets Vesper and Freddie to swim and play a bit calmly without her.

“Hi,” she says, properly.

“Hello, darling,” Vex smiles. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”

Keyleth looks up at her with a hurt frown. “I wouldn’t miss today,” she says. They both look up and see a raven fly above Vesper before disappearing into the trees. “I miss him,” Keyleth hums. A fact, one that doesn’t sting as much as it used to, but instead simply sits there in the air between them.

“He would have loved today,” Vex smiles, refusing to feel sad on a day that she would rather celebrate him instead.

Keyleth watches Freddie gear himself up to try and dive into the water, Vesper, holding her arms out and cheering him on. Vex holds her breath and then her daughter says, “Come on Freddie, you can do it!” and he leaps, arms pressed tightly to his ears. He comes up sputtering and Vesper grabs him, holding him up and kissing his face. “YOU DID IT!” she cheers. “Mama! Did you see?”

Vex waves and nods but holds a finger to her lips and points at the sleeping children. Vesper nods, ever eager to be seen as old enough to help and tugs Freddie along to the second pond, further away. Trinket follows and Vex leans back into the tree with a sigh. Moments later, a hand slips into her own and squeezes. Keyleth says nothing, they’ve both worked through their grief together and separately, many times over at this point. Instead, she holds onto Vex, grounding her in this moment, surrounded by the sun, her children’s laughter, and the gardens of Whitestone. Vex holds Keyleth’s hand up and kisses the back of her palm, watching Trinket grumble about being splashed by Vesper.

Percy finds them like that, an hour later, once he is finally let out of the meeting. Vesper and Freddie have gone pruney and come up for lunch and the twins have woken up to join them.

“Dada!” Freddie whispers excitedly. “I did a dive!”

“No!” Percy exclaims. Freddie nods emphatically and Percy laughs, lifting him up and twirling him around before he lowers himself down to sit beside Vex. He places kisses on Keyleth and Vex’s temples, the shared loss momentarily taking hold of all three of them before the twins demand his attention.

Vex hears a raven caw out loudly, and she catches Keyleth’s eye and smiles.

…

…

**_iii._ **

Vex squeezes Percy’s hand tightly.

“She’ll make it,” he whispers into her ear.

“What if she doesn’t?”

“She will,” Percy says, all confidence and calm for a man whose eldest daughter is about to get married. Though, she supposes that he got all of his hysteria over and done with when Freddie came home and surprise announced his engagement to a dwarven woman named Hilda at the tender age of twenty-three. Percy had lamented about everything under the sun until Grog had grabbed him by the shoulders and declared that this was the first cool thing that Freddie had ever done. When Hilda nearly beat him in an arm-wrestling contest, Grog had cheered, thrown her over his shoulder, and paraded her around the dining room—to both Freddie’s delight and horror.

Vex swallows thickly at the thought of Grog. They knew, goliaths don’t tend to live long lives, and Grog would never be someone capable of settling down and aging gracefully, but two years later and it still stings. Only the joy of baby Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo V worked to squelch it. Grog had been the one to dub him Val, leaning over Percy and Freddie’s shoulders and declaring that hopefully, the three-week-old would have a beard soon.

He died two months later, fighting a Kraken on his own, exactly the way that he would have wanted to go out—dragging it down to death with him.

Vex looks over the aisle of chairs and finds two-year-old Val, clapping in her son’s arms as Scanlan and Kaylie play him a tune to keep him distracted. Vex squeezes Percy’s hand again. _Gods, they’re getting old. Grandparents already._ Percy shows it far more than Vex’ahlia does, of course. Vainly, she loves to tease him about it, but in truth, it only reminds her that her lifespan is going to expand his own. It’s not something that she likes to spend any bit of time considering.

Velora slips over and wraps an arm around Vex’s waist, whispering, “Vesper is panicking about her dress. She won’t let me mend it, she wanted you.”

Vex presses a kiss to her little sister’s cheek and nods. “Come and get me when Keyleth shows up please.”

“She’ll be here,” Percy says, again. Vex shoots him a look but he only laughs and offers Velora some of his cake.

When Vex slips into the room, Claudia is groaning in a chair with a bunch of fabric over her head, and Johanna is trying to get Vesper to sit down at let her look at the dress. “Oh, thank the gods,” she hisses once she catches sight of Vex. “Mom, she’s being impossible.”

“DON’T SAY THAT,” Vesper yells. “I’m not — I’m just,” she cuts herself off, flops down, and starts to cry.

“Everyone out,” Vex orders.

“She _is,_ ” Johanna whispers to her twin.

“Totally,” Claudia agrees.

“Everyone. Out.”

“Should we go and tell Lyra that you’re panicking?” Claudia teases and Vex might have to stop one of her daughters from killing the other today, and she’s not looking forward to it. Vesper’s eyes go dark and she looks up at her sister and casts _Frostbite._ Claudia screams and tries to dodge but slips into Johanna, who’s laughing too hard to catch her.

“If you go anywhere near my fiancé right now Claud, I’ll kill you, and Mom will let me,” Vesper warns.

“I will not.”

“I’ll kill you, and Joey will let me.”

Johanna pauses and considers this, helping Claudia stand as she weighs her loyalty to her twin or her elder sister. “Maybe, because that would be cruel. But, I’ll bring Claud right back to life.”

“You’d let her kill me!”

“I mean…”

“Everyone. Out,” Vex demands and shoves her daughters out of the room. Vesper looks up at her miserably. “They would never go tell Lyra that you’re panicking, stop worrying.”

“I’m acting like a monster. She’s not even going to want to marry me.”

“She is,” Vex says, hauling her daughter up. “Because she loves you. And they love you. And I love you. And you are the furthest thing from a monster I’ve ever seen, and I’ve faced many of them.” Vex frowns at the tear in Vesper’s dress. “Really, Pike would be more helpful in this situation than I will.”

“I just… wanted you here,” Vesper admits, clearly _hating_ how young she sounds. Vex hates it on some level as well. Her _baby_ is thirty years old and about to be married—if Keyleth would ever get here. Vex crouches and pulls Vesper into her arms. Keyleth and Pike find them still in the same embrace a few minutes later, Keyleth, still breathless from running, and Pike in the midst of telling the staff something about the food.

“Oh,” Pike stops mid-sentence and looks down at them, then promptly bursts into tears.

“Stop that,” Vex demands. “I need you to _Mending_ her dress.” She rises and hauls Vesper along with her, turning her so that Pike can get a clear sight. She swipes quickly at her own eyes, but Keyleth catches her. Because, of course, she does. She smiles, one of her beaming ones that lights up a room and leaves Vex with no ability to be annoyed with her anywhere to be found. “You made it,” she says, attempting to sound scolding, but it comes out worried and desperate and Vex wants to swallow the words back. She doesn’t like being openly vulnerable any more than her daughter does.

Keyleth reaches over, pulls Vex into her arms, and nuzzles her head against Vex’s. “Of _course,_ I made it,” she says. “Did you really think that I wouldn’t?” she sounds almost hurt, for a beat, and Vex quickly shakes her head.

“No. Not really.”

“Okay!” Pike declares to Vesper, clapping. “You look beautiful! Let’s get you married!”

Vesper laughs, full of nothing but nervous excitement, now, and the four of them walk out into the gardens together. Pike stands up between Vesper and Lyra, grinning and shining as brightly as her god while she officiates. Keyleth is crammed on one side of Vex, Percy on her other. When Vesper and Lyra kiss, Ronan, Freddie, and the twins all erupt, leading the entire congregation of people in loud cheers. Vesper is crying tears of happiness and Vex reaches for Percy’s hand, squeezing tight. Keyleth holds up her hands and _Druidcrafts_ flower petals to fall around them all. As the flowers gently fall, three ravens suddenly fly out from somewhere in the trees; one landing directly on top of Vesper’s head, the other two quickly pausing on top Keyleth and Vex’s before finally dropping to caw at Velora.

Velora turns around and catches Vex’s eye, a raven perched on each shoulder as sticks her tongue out, laughing as the three birds all fly off together. Vex sucks in a watery breath and leans into her husband, smiling as Percy wraps himself around her, crying his own happy tears.

Vex spends the rest of the evening dancing in the gardens of Whitestone with her husband and friends; twirling from Percy’s arms to Keyleth’s, to Scanlan’s, Zahra’s, and then back again, laughing and soaking up this feeling for as long as she can manage.

…

…

**_iv._ **

Vex can’t breathe.

She sits there, in the barren gardens of Whitestone and shakes with sobs, fingernails digging into the dirt as she tries to center herself, to imagine a way to get up and move past this pain.

She can’t.

She is seventy-five years old, though she knows that she looks more like someone in her late fifties. She is a mother of five; grandmother to six; one of the legendary heroes of Vox Machina; Baroness of the Third House of Whitestone and Grand Mistress of the Grey Hunt, and now, she is a widow.

Vex’ahlia wails into the cold night.

It’s not the first time that loss has touched her—not by a long shot—but it hurts like it is. Vax’s death… broke her, but because she still had Percy, still had Keyleth, had Vox Machina, her children, she could manage. Grog’s death was unsurprising but painful. Kash’s was sudden but touched her more in the ways that it hit Zahra and Keyleth than hurt personally. Gilmore… that one had stung. And she _knew,_ she knew that this day would come. Biologically, it was inevitable, but it is one thing to know that you will outlive your husband, and another thing entirely to live through it.

 _Keyleth is going to have to do this so many times,_ Vex thinks, and then she cannot breathe all over again.

As if by being summoned, suddenly Keyleth appears—looking almost unchanged by the years as if time had frozen completely. Her face is red-stained and puffy from crying as she sits down and wraps herself around Vex tightly. “I miss him so much,” Vex cries.

“I know,” Keyleth whispers, running her fingers softly through Vex’s hair. “I know, me too.”

“I don’t want to—” Vex cuts herself off, swallowing the thought that Percy would never want her to have.

“I know,” Keyleth says anyway, because she has done this before. She will have to do it again. And again. And again. There are thousands of deaths waiting for Keyleth of the Air Ashari to bear her way through. Vex herself among them.

Vex clings to Keyleth, the two of them crying and watching the sun set over the gardens. It’s not beautiful, not in the way Vex would think on any other night where Percy was alive and well and sitting there between them. But, there is a beauty to it, and Vex holds onto that as tightly as she holds onto Keyleth.

…

…

**_v._ **

Keyleth looks radiant; standing in white across from Vex’ahlia—not looking a day over thirty despite her ninety-three years—beaming and covered in cherry blossoms. Vex only allowed herself a moment or two of vanity to consider that while Keyleth looks the youngest amongst them all, Vex looks like a woman in her early sixties. She complained to Pike and Vesper about it for ten minutes and then promptly moved on.

She never imagined getting married again. Percy’s death has felt... unimaginable. Living like a ghost in Whitestone with no one but the staff had been unbearable, so Vex’ahlia had closed everything up and moved to Zephrah that first year. She couldn’t stand to walk past Percy’s study. To sleep in their bedroom. To sit alone in the kitchen and try to force herself to eat her meals. Winter in Whitestone could be oppressive and never-ending and Vex’ahlia was full of enough grief to last a lifetime.

The brightness of Zephrah had initially made her furious—how dare the world be beautiful without Percy in it. But, after that first awful year, waking to the sun, to elves flying on the wind, children laughing in pools of water, and Keyleth’s soft shy face had felt like something to look forward to, rather than something to rail against.

Vex doesn’t know when that easy companionship shifted from a shared mourning, to some new routine of their old friendship, to something romantic, but it surprised her.

Until it didn’t.

Vex woke up nearly twenty years after Percy’s death and realized that she had been building a new life with Keyleth in Zephrah for years, now. The children came to visit her in Zephrah, not Whitestone. Her grandchildren all said, Nana and Kiki as if they were an assumed unit. Keyleth went off and did her work as The Voice of the Tempest and came home to Vex, excitedly telling her what she had been up to, or venting her insecurities and frustrations to Vex, and Vex alone.

Vex checked with Pike, to be sure. On a day when she had woken up and gone about her morning routine of setting up breakfast for the two of them, Keyleth had walked into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed and radiant and Vex had felt a familiar tug in her gut that hadn’t been related to Keyleth since back in their early Vox Machina days. She’d stumbled through the conversation on autopilot, feeling like she was going mad, and gone to Pike the second that Keyleth had left, shooting her confused looks.

Pike was, of course, delighted. Vex paced the length of Pike’s living room in a full panic, feeling all of twenty years old with a crush again and having no idea what to do about it.

“Ask her on a date,” Pike suggested, shrugging.

“A _date,_ ” Vex had scoffed. “A _date?_ I am a ninety-five-year-old widow. She is one of my best friends, and we live together. How in the world would I go about asking her on a _date?”_

“You just say, Keyleth, I’d like to take you on a date!” Pike had smiled at her like a demented, proud parent, even though Vex was clearly furious and panicked, and it just notched her anger up to another level.

 _“What the fuck are you even on about?”_ Vex had screeched. Flopping down into a chair, she groaned and put her head in her hands. “Gods, I wish I could talk to Percy. He’d know what to do.”

“He would be better at this than me,” Pike admitted.

“Better at telling his wife how to ask his best friend on a date?” Vex said, incredulously.

“Yeah,” Pike said, cheerfully. “He always understood you two better than anyone else.”

Vex had gone and had a bit of a cry, after that.

When she finally got her courage up enough to say anything to Keyleth about her revelation, it was comical. In her panic, Vex had forgotten that flirting with Keyleth was one of the most entertaining and alluring things in the world, and doing it _consciously_ was even more fun. Keyleth had sputtered and gone a delightful shade of bright red, then promptly fallen right out of her chair, and Vex knew this was all going to work out just fine.

Once they’d acknowledged it, it almost seemed like nothing had truly changed at all, and that only made Vex feel utterly dense about the whole thing. Marriage was never discussed, but three years later, Vex had woken up and realized that, all things considered, she might have another hundred years’ worth of life left before her, and she _wanted_ to be someone’s wife again. Specifically, Keyleth’s.

The gardens of Whitestone had been Keyleth’s idea. They’d been going back more and more frequently in the last few years, Val had taken over Percy’s place on the council after Freddie had stepped down a few years before, and it didn’t sting in the same way anymore. Now, it made Vex smile.

Now, her family spills out around her. Children. Grandchildren. Great-grandchildren, and every friend who’s still alive to celebrate with them. Vex holds Keyleth’s hands as Pike stands between them, crying happily. Flower petals fall and ravens caw and somewhere, Vex _swears_ she hears a gunshot ring out in jubilation.

Vex kisses Keyleth, and the world sings.


End file.
